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Flemish painter. Van Lerius found the artist s name in a baptismal register for the year 1614; however, an inscription on an engraved self-portrait of 1649 gives 1618 as his year of birth, and in 1666 he himself claimed to be 48. His name is listed in the archives of Antwerp s Guild of St Luke for 1627-28, the year he became a pupil of Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Later he studied with David Rijckaert the Younger. Coques was admitted to the painters guild as an independent master only in 1640-41, this long delay suggesting that he travelled. He may have gone to England, for he was later given the nickname Little van Dyck , referring to the perceived influence on his work of Anthony van Dyck, who was in England after 1632. In 1643 Coques married his teacher s daughter Catharina Rijckaert (1610-74), by whom he had two daughters. His second wife, whom he married in 1675, was Catharina Rysheuvels; they had no children. Coques was a respected member of the artistic community in Antwerp: he was twice deacon of the Guild of St Luke, was a member of two rhetoricians societies and in 1661 was praised by Cornelis de Bie, in whose book there is an engraved portrait of him. The archives mention two pupils: Cornelis van den Bosch in 1643 and Lenaert Frans Verdussen in 1665-66.